Search results for ""Equinox Publishing""

The Northern Soul scene is a dance-based music culture that originated in the English North and Midlands in the early 1970s, it still thrives today with a mix of fifty-year olds and new converts, and its celebration of 1960s Soul has an international following. This innovative and distinctive book brings together original commissioned essays and pivotal scholarly articles that have defined the field so far, interspersed with dossiers of published journalistic articles and photographs, and interviews with, for instance, producers and directors of Northern Soul-themed films. This publication represents a subject-defining book on the history and contemporary nature of the scene, and the first anthology of work in the field, which will provide a forum for vibrant dialogue and debate for a readership of lecturers and researchers, students and general readers interested in creative analyses and interpretations of the scene, past and present. The book links academic research, photography, film production and journalism in the documentation and analysis of historic and current music scenes. Representations of the scene from different media and different historical locations are juxtaposed to construct a rich and diverse statement about the music, people, places and practices that constitute the Northern Soul scene in the UK.

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Since the early 1970s the increasingly effective conduct of archaeological work in the City of London and surrounding parts of the conurbation have revolutionised our view of the development and European importance of London between 1100 and 1600. There have been hundreds of archaeological excavations of every type of site, from the cathedral to chapels, palaces to outhouses, bridges, wharves, streams, fields, kilns, roads and lanes. The study of the material culture of Londoners over these five centuries has begun in earnest, based on thousands of accurately dated artefacts, especially found along the waterfront. Work by documentary historians has complemented and filled out the new picture. This book, written by an archaeologist who has been at the centre of this study since 1974, will summarise the main findings and new suggestions about the development of the City, its ups and downs through the Black Death and the Dissolution of the Monasteries; its place in Europe as a capital city with great architecture and relations with many other parts of Europe, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. London has been the most intensively studied medieval city in Europe by archaeologists, due to the pace of development especially since the 1970s. Thus although this will be a study of a single medieval city, it will be a major contribution to the Archaeology of Europe, 1100-1600. The book is endorsed by the Museum of London, the City of London Archaeological Trust and the City of London Corporation whose logos will appear on the back cover.

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In the early twentieth century, The Eastern Buddhist journal pioneered the presentation of Buddhism to the west and encouraged the west's engagement in interpretation. This interactive process increased dramatically in the post-war period, when dialogue between Buddhist and Christian thought began to take off in earnest. These debates and dialogues brought in voices with a Zen orientation, influenced in part by the philosophical Buddhism of the Kyoto School. Also to be heard however were contributions from the Pure Land and the Shin Buddhist traditions, which also have a strong tradition in the city. The book brings together a wide range of authors who have significantly influenced subsequent Buddhist-Christian dialogue and the interaction between east and west.

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In the early twentieth century The Eastern Buddhist not only shared in pioneering presentations of Buddhism to the west but invited interaction with non-Japanese authors. This interactive process increased dramatically in the post-war period, when dialogue between Buddhist and Christian thought began to take off in earnest. Significant here was the philosophical Buddhism of the frequently cited Kyoto School, a tradition of thought and teaching named after Kyoto University where it was largely based. At the same time these debates and dialogues brought in not only Zen voices but also thinkers from the Shin Buddhist tradition. Both of these orientations are reflected here. While the contributions stem mainly from the fifties, sixties and seventies, they have significantly influenced subsequent Buddhist-Christian dialogue. It was still a time of exciting mutual discovery. Anybody wishing to enter into this process of dialogue and exchange will therefore find it of great interest and value to approach it by considering the ideas and insights presented here. Because of the wealth of materials the selection has been spread across two volumes in the series Eastern Buddhist Voices and the present volume includes contributions from the earlier part of the period (Interactions with Japanese Buddhism includes contributions from the later part).

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There is a general perception that almost all writing in antiquity was done by men. However, some important literature written by women during this period has survived, and many other women writers published work that has not been preserved. Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome is a comprehensive anthology of the surviving literary texts of women writers from the Greco-Roman world, offering new translations of the work of over fifty women. From Sappho, who lived in the seventh century BC, through to Eudocia and Egeria in the fifth century AD, the texts come from a wide range of sources: few works have survived intact, and many are known to us only through literary quotations, scraps of papyrus or even graffiti. Women's literature in the ancient world spanned the fields of poetry and prose. There is lyric, epic and Christian poetry, along with prose works in history, medicine, alchemy, oratory and philosophy. In addition to genuine works by women, antiquity witnessed the creation of pseudonymous texts which were attributed to famous people (including some women); examples of these are included in this collection. Each author is introduced with a critical review of what we know about the writer, her work and the significance of her work, along with discussion of the texts which follow. The general introduction looks into the problem of the authenticity of some texts attributed to women and places literature by women into the wider literary and social contexts of the ancient Greco-Roman world.

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"The Art of Cookery" is the only books of its kind to have come out of an English religious community. It is also that very rare thing, a cookery book of the English 18th-century that has the author's own recipes throughout; nothing seems to have been plagiarized or borrowed from other writers. The Dean of Durham Cathedral, who employed the author, had a lavish grant for entertaining and his generous hospitality meant that his cook had to cater for all levels of society, from canons of the Cathedral with sophisticated tastes such as the gourmand Dr. Jacque Sterne, to tradesmen, poor widows, and those of even more modest status. Thacker's book keeps many pre-Reformation recipes and thus shows the gradual transition in the Cathedral's eating habits. This facsimilie is introduced by the well-known food historian Ivan Day who examines the recipes and reveals the remarkable tradition of ecclesiastical hospitality that survived at Durham for more than eight hundred years.

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In the Eurowest pain is discursively framed as something that elides discourse and therefore is outside language. In this framing, pain, as outside language, is given asocial and ahistorical status understood to be beyond human construction. Indeed, played out in systems of belief and practice, pain acts as a medium for reciprocal relations with the metaphysical other since it too is understood as originating and sharing a part in the ‘authentic’ or ‘real’ from which the metaphysical, and therefore truth, is understood to emerge. Understood as part of this domain, pain is linked to truth and therefore understood to be a means to truth; hence the use of torture to secure the truth. With this kind of discursive framing, this book works to make apparent the rhetorical play of pain demonstrating its social and political imperatives.

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Description The music industry, as with most other media forms, is in the middle of a period of enormous transformation. Digital technologies have empowered producers and consumers of music - traditional ways of making and distributing music are under threat as musicians and their audiences embrace new opportunities, many of which bypass the incumbent middlemen. Whilst it is clear that the music industry is thriving, the traditional recording industry, dominated by a handful of multinational corporations is struggling to stay relevant. The changes are so dramatic that the term "Music 2.0" has become commonly used to delineate old and new business models and approaches. But the demise of the traditional music industry is overstating things - the reality is that (whilst their profits may be diminishing) they still dominate a multi-billion dollar marketplace and exercise unprecedented control over the star-making process. And, of course, they have the resources to be able to reinvent themselves. The actual future of music is a complex and contested one. This book aims to unpack that complexity, map the changes and explain the causes and motivations surrounding an industry undergoing change. It explores the world of popular music from three distinct perspectives. Firstly, it examines the new opportunities available to consumers of music - interrogating how the lines between production and consumption are blurring, creating fans who do much more than just listen to music. Secondly, it draws on interviews with a diverse range of musicians explaining their place in the brave new world and trying to articulate their newly defined roles. Finally, it examines the industry itself, and unpack the responses to current challenges from new and old players alike.

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Brian Wilson is a musical genius. Ever since British press agent Derek Taylor launched a publicity campaign with that theme to promote the landmark LP Pet Sounds in 1966, some variation of that claim has been obligatory when discussing the significance of the Beach Boys' founder and chief composer. Originally designed to liberate Wilson from his outmoded image as a purveyor of sun-and-surf teen pop so the symphonic sophistication of his music might be properly appreciated, the assertion has been repeated so often in the forty-plus years since as to render it virtually meaningless. Indeed, if anything, the label today seems an albatross around the man's neck, inasmuch as Wilson's slow-but-steady reemergence as a working musician since 1998 after three decades of mental illness and drug abuse, has been freighted with expectations that he again produce something as epochal as Good VibrationsA" to justify the adoration he inspires in impassioned defenders. Brian Wilson interrogates this and other paradigms that stymie critical appreciation of Wilson's work both with the Beach Boys and as a solo artist.This is the first study of Wilson to eschew chronology in favor of a topical organization that allows discussion of lyrical themes and musical motifs outside of any prejudicial presumptions about their place in the trajectory of his career. The meanings of Brian Wilson's work have tended to be determined by the well-known storyline of his rise, fall, and redemption.A" From abused child to seemingly unstoppable hit-maker to eccentric with a living-room sandbox to the 300-pound Orson Wells of rockA" to the heavily medicated Icarus figure with the full-time Svengali psychiatrist to his current incarnation as a fragile, elder-statesman survivor, Brian Wilson has, quite simply, lived the most celebrated bizarre life in pop music. Its sheer Shakespearean proportions have overshadowed a beauty and gentleness of spirit that is as vibrant in Farmer's DaughterA" (1963) as it is in recent efforts such as Live Let LiveA" (2008).While no one would disagree that Wilson peakedA" in 1966 with Pet Sounds his current CD, That Old Lucky Sun (2008), finds him creating beautiful music steeped in Americana that deserves discussion on its own terms rather than as a coda to the accomplishments of his gold-record youth.

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Initially coined by art historians in the second half of the nineteenth century to denote an ambivalent artistic style and period, 'Orientalizing' has been invariably used to describe a phenomenon, a revolution, or a movement. Regional developments and innovations in the ancient Mediterranean have been explained by reference to an Orient, the metaphorical bazaar containing the artistic opulence and social sophistication that spread to the West and changed it. "Debating Ancient Orietalization" brings together papers presented at a symposium held in Oxford in 2002 to debate the theme of ancient Orientalization. The volume reassesses the concept of Orientalizing, questioning whether it is valid to interpret Mediterranean-wide processes of change in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages by the term Orientalization. Like the ancient Mediterranean itself, the list of contributors is multicultural, and their contributions multidisciplinary, combining various strands of archaeological and textual evidence with different methodological approaches.

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"Indian Religions: Renaissance and Renewal", the latest collection of "Spalding" papers, celebrates the work of Ninian Smart in bringing together papers by some of the most eminent scholars within this field. The papers are concerned with cultural, religious, political or textual exchange and encounter, and therefore in concepts of rupture, revival, restoration, reformation and reformulation. The title of this book comes directly from Professor Klaus Klostermaier's paper which argues that the real Hindu Renaissance is happening now. However, the title also embraces the contemporary problematic of the study of Indian religions. There cannot ever have been a time when the scholarly study of Indian religions has been under such scrutiny or more politically, culturally and religiously sensitive. The papers in section one urge a major rethinking of academic paradigms. The papers in the second section focus on texts, contexts and ways of understanding. Vastly different in style, period and approach, they nevertheless cumulatively develop sensitivity to textual continuities, to the purposes of commentators, and the contemporary creative reinterpretation of texts and their application to real life. The third section is concerned with cultural and religious encounter and exchange, transformation, restoration, revival, and reformation. The fourth section focuses on the performative, experiential, and expressive. There are papers on the Hindu imagination and imaginary Hinduisms; religion, the media and a multi-modal future; ritual performance and gender; and art and the aesthetic imagination.

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Archaeologists have shown that towns can claim to be more representative of the nature of society of which they formed part than any other type of site. In towns we are most likely to find archaeological evidence of both long-distance and local trade, of exploitation of natural resources, of specialization and of technological evidence in manufacturing, of social differentiation, of the means of political control, and of the religious aspirations of the population. Medieval Towns is the second and enlarged edition of the book Medieval Towns which was published in 1994 by Continuum. It surveys recent work on the archaeological study of medieval towns in Britain. Its emphasis is on the discoveries by archaeological teams, nearly always on sites to be developed or already under construction. From the vast haul of information now at our disposal, after thirty years of data gathering, we can begin to ask questions of many kinds. What went on in medieval towns? How did the rich and poor live, what nourished them, what did they die of? What was the weather like, the quality of life, the restrictions or special pleasures of living in towns?

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Based on ethnographic research among contemporary Pagan communities in Southern Italy (Salento, Apulia), The Spider Dance challenges (uni)linear ideas and experiences of time and temporality by showing the interconnectedness of alternative historicities, healing, and place-making among persons engaged in Pagan practices.

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Hired Guns: Portraits of Women in Alternative Music is a look across several decades of the music industry through the experiences and careers of a selection of professional female musicians.

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What to Remember, What to Teach is intended for researchers, graduate students and teachers that are interested in the fields of discourse and memory studies and, particularly, in the linguistics and multimodal recontextualization of history into pedagogical discourses and their relationship with the transmission and co-construction of memories of a recent national past. This book aims to provide a better understanding of the processes of memory practices and their construction in the pedagogical discourse of history in Chile regarding a recent painful national past of human rights violations and dictatorship, which is part of a history shared by Latin American countries. With this purpose in mind, this book offers a detailed discourse analysis of how this recent traumatic national history is recontextualized and negotiated into secondary level Chilean history education. The analysis proposed is a social discourse analysis of key written and oral corpora of pedagogical practices from a multimodal perspective, paying particular attention to the construction of evaluative prosodies in the discourses analyzed. The corpora contemplated for the analysis comprise official History textbooks, History classroom interactions, teachers and students interviews, Chilean history written by specialists and official documents produced by the state during post-dictatorial years. This book not only offers a detailed linguistics and multimodal analysis of key discourses that construct pedagogical practices of recent traumatic past of dictatorship and human rights violations in Chile; it also presents a theoretical development of the interpersonal and experiential regions of meaning from a Systemic Functional Linguistics approach and from Spanish language resources. In sum, this book is intended as a contribution to our understanding of how a recent sensitive past of a nation is historized, transmitted and co-constructed by new generations of youth and their history teachers through a discursive exploration of the processes of remembering and forgetting in the micro space of memory practice of the classroom and through teachers and students personal and social memories.

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Designed for intermediate and advanced users of English, this book offers an integrated approach to essay writing by focusing on both the processes and products of writing. It has been developed over many years of teaching and researching written English, in particular, with university students in Thailand. In addition to addressing common issues involving written English which many novice writers face, it covers the basic elements of writing-sentences and paragraphs-and introduces students to descriptive, narrative, expository, and argumentative writing. The book's content and layout are carefully tailored for student writers, as reflected in color highlighting of important text and images, placement of key information in boxes, and inclusion of plentiful exercises with answer keys. Care has also been taken to avoid formality and unnecessary complexity. Model examples taken from actual students' essays as well as published texts help to ensure the book's appeal and educational value to its intended audience of novice writers. Drawing on the Systemic Functional Linguistics of Michael Halliday and others, each of the five units begins with a form-function orientation. The purpose is to raise students' awareness of the links between language structures at the micro-level of words, phrases, and clauses, and to introduce them to higher-order rhetorical goals at the macro-level of paragraphs and essays. Students learn to recognize and evaluate texts for key language features (formal knowledge), such as descriptive phrases, figurative language, and various types of transitions. Students then practice putting these elements together to form larger functional units (rhetorical knowledge), focusing on unity, cohesion, and a clear overall purpose. Each unit then focuses on generating ideas and content (subject knowledge) using critical questions, collaborative discussions, and visualization techniques. At strategic points, students are cycled through key reflective practices (process knowledge) as a way to help them complete longer writing tasks. These longer tasks include clear scoring rubrics, which can be used by the student or teacher as a means to gauge progress and provide feedback. The book will help students acquire essential knowledge alongside transferable and functional skills-both of which can be applied across areas of study and in future writing projects.

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Hinduism in Five Minutes provides an accessible and lively introduction to common questions about the practices, ideas, and narratives commonly identified as Hindu. Suitable for beginning students and the general reader, the book offers more than 70 brief essays on a wide range of fascinating questions about Hinduism and its study, such as: How did Hinduism begin? How many gods / goddesses do Hindus worship? Which scriptures are important in Hinduism? Why are many Hindus vegetarian? What is the role of women in Hindu rituals? What do Hindus believe? What is caste, and why are some people treated differently because of it? How do Hindus celebrate festivals like Holi? Is yoga Hindu? What makes arranged marriage appealing to some Hindus? Do you have to be Indian to be a Hindu? Each essay is written by a leading authority and offers succinct, insightful answers along with suggestions for further reading, making the book an ideal starting point for classroom use or personal browsing.

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Tomasz Stańko is arguably the greatest jazz musician Poland has ever produced. His career spanned almost 60 years until his death in 2018. A visionary trumpeter and composer, a protégé of Krzysztof Komeda and a colleague of musicians from Poland, Sweden, Norway, Britain, Cuba and the USA, his impact on jazz internationally was profound, proving that jazz was not exclusively an American art form but truly world-wide. In 2014 he was awarded the Polytika Passport in Poland, the Prix du Musicien Européan in Paris and the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik. The book is a no-holds-barred extended interview with broadcaster Rafał Księżyk originally published in Polish by Wydawnictwo Literackie.

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What do dogma, repression, and conflict have in common? They all result from human judgement blocked from wider understanding by a false assumption of completeness. This book puts forward a theory of absolutization, bringing together a multi-disciplinary understanding of this central flaw in human judgement, and what we can do about it. This approach, drawing on Buddhist thought and practice, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, embodied meaning and systems theory, offers a rigorous introduction to absolutization as the central problem addressed in Middle Way Philosophy, which is a synthetic approach developed by the author over more than twenty years in a series of books. It challenges disciplinary boundaries as well as offering a substantial framework for practical application.

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Indigenous Religious Traditions in Five Minutes aims to answer many of the questions that come to mind when we think about the religious lives of Native and Indigenous peoples of the world. Scholars from many fields answer dozens of questions about a wide variety of specific Indigenous religious traditions and an array of the ideas, practices, and beliefs many people associate with them. Do Native peoples have creator Gods? What is shamanism? Why are there so many spellings of voodoo? Is Paganism considered an Indigenous religious tradition? We also interrogate the concept of Indigenous religious traditions, by asking what the phrase means in relation to the larger fields of Native American and Indigenous Studies and Religious Studies, whether all religions were at some point indigenous, and what the value of studying Indigenous religious traditions is today. Specialists respond to questions like these and many others in easily accessible language and provide references for further exploration, making this volume useful for personal study or classroom use.

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This volume is a tribute to the work of Michael Jerryson, one of the initiators of the academic discourse on Buddhism and violence whose intellectual pursuits have resulted in a trailblazing shift in the academic study of Buddhism. Preconceived in the modern west as a pacific, chiefly meditative practice aiming for personal salvation and world peace, Buddhism has been exposed in the last few decades for its manifold legacy of violence. This is apparent not only in Buddhist groups' history of support for actual military aims, but in Buddhism's association with religious nationalism and in its more subtle expressions of discursive and structural violence. This exposure is due in significant part to Michael Jerryson who, in addition to exploring this perhaps surprising Buddhist history, has investigated the dynamism of Buddhist authority. Most recently in his critique of U Wirathu, the Burmese Buddhist monk whose advocacy of Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar has stirred a boiling pot of anti-Muslim resentments, Michael Jerryson has shown that reverence for Burmese religious authorities transcends respect for traditional Buddhist doctrine and monastic accomplishments. It emanates instead from the phenomenon of religious authority itself and from the cultural institutions which support it. His examinations have resulted in heightened sensitivity to the sociology of religious authority and violence. The scholarly contributions in this volume include discussions of Buddhism and violence, religious authority and nationalism, whether Buddhist, Christian, white, or other.

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In Buddhism in Five Minutes, academic specialists offer answers to 75 questions about Buddhism that people curious about Buddhism might ask. The questions cover the Buddha, what the Buddha taught, Buddhist monasticism and the role of lay people, the historical development of Buddhism, Buddhist art, Buddhist ethics, Buddhist responses to other religions, and Buddhist thought on contemporary issues. They include: Who is the fat Buddha figure? Can we know what the historical Buddha taught? What is Nirvāṇa? Why do Buddhists meditate? Does Buddhism support gender equality? What is Zen Buddhism? Are Buddhists pacifist? What do Buddhists think about those who are LGBTQI? Are alcohol and drugs ever acceptable to Buddhists? How do Buddhists view Artificial Intelligence? Taken together the questions cover most aspects of Buddhist belief and practice in the contemporary world. The collection is sponsored by the UK Association for Buddhist Studies but contributors are drawn from Asia, North America and Latin America, as well as Europe. The questions are answered in accessible, non-specialist language without too many footnotes. Each should take not much more than five minutes to read.

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The Jungian concept of archetypes is of immense value for critically distinguishing what is potentially of universal practical value in religious and other cultural traditions, and separating this from the dogmatic elements. However, Jung encumbered the concept of archetypes with debatable constructions like the 'collective unconscious' that are unnecessary for understanding their practical function. This book puts forward a far-reaching new theory of archetypes that is functional without being reductive. At the centre of this is the idea that archetypes are adaptations to help us maintain inspiration over time. Humans are such distractable beings that they need constant reminders to maintain integration with their most sustainable intentions: reminders using the profound power of symbol linked to embodied experience. This multi-disciplinary book weaves together religious studies, ethical philosophy, the psychology of bias, the neuroscience of brain lateralisation, the linguistics of embodied meaning, the feedback loops of systems theory, with a lifetime's experience of Buddhist practice and appreciation of symbolism in the arts: all with the aim of producing a fresh understanding of the role of archetypes in religion and beyond, that can also be directly applied in practice.

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This volume presents an archive of remembrances of the person and the contributions of the late Jonathan Z. Smith (1938-2017). Section one collects previously unpublished papers from three separate recent scholarly panels (from the American Academy of Religion, the Society of Biblical Literature, and the North American Association for the Study of Religion), in which a wide variety of scholars reflect on the impact Smith had on their own careers and the field at large. Section two includes revised versions of blog posts, many of which appeared shortly after news of Smith's death, in which scholars, journalists, and onetime students of Smith offer a more intimate and personal look at his legacy. The volume closes with the extended transcripts of seven interviews about Smith carried out with those who either trained or worked with him. Taken together, the volume documents the role Smith's work has played in the modern field while providing a basis for further considering the future direction of the field.

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It is said that Pagan traditions are the fastest-growing religious group in America. Numbers are tricky to come by, but we know that contemporary Pagans report themselves as living in every American state, and in countries around the world. This volume reviews the shifting landscape of current Pagan spirituality, the unique culture and needs which must be understood in order to engage with contemporary Pagans, and the implications for future leadership, including organizational models, training and educational needs. The author has interviewed Pagan leaders about their own experiences and looks at data from the Pagan Engagement and Spiritual Support survey of 2016 to answer questions such as What does "ministry" mean for Pagans? Who do Pagans turn to for spiritual support? Who ought to be providing that support? Do Pagans want leaders who are trained for ministry? What kind of training do they need, and how do they get it? If you are a Pagan who wishes to support others in these ways, you will find here a framework for your own work, including stories and examples. If you are an interfaith minister, a chaplain, or a spiritual leader who finds that Pagans are intersecting with your work, you will become acquainted with the culture of this old-but-new spirituality. If you are an educator, may you find Constellated Ministry useful in teaching seminarians and students of religious studies.

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This book seeks to elucidate the concept of justice, not so much as it is expressed in law courts (retributive and procedural justice) or in state budgets (distributive justice), but as primary justice - what it means and how it can be grounded in the inalienable rights that each human being possesses qua human being. It draws inspiration from two recent works of philosopher Nicolas Wolterstorff, but also from the groundbreaking Islamic initiative of 2007, the Common Word Letter addressed by 138 eminent Muslim scholars and clerics to the pope and all Christian leaders. This document affirmed that the two highest commandments in both Judaism and Christianity are also at the heart of the Islamic tradition - love of God and love of neighbor. In a style that lends itself to the classroom and beyond, the book's six chapters all begin with a case study of justice, so as to emphasize that justice must also be embodied in righteous social, political and economic practices. Along the way, leading contemporary scholars and activists from both traditions urge the reader - Muslim, Christian, or whatever - to look afresh at an age-old conundrum: how do justice and love interact so as to create a world in which everyone finds his or her rightful place?

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This volume represents the final output of a long-standing collaboration by an international and cross-disciplinary team sponsored by the Center for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. It aims to tell the history of human cultural production in the Eastern Mediterranean rather than the history of specific states or religions. Simultaneously, the volume argues that the agency of local communities is a key to understand the history of long-term change and cultural production in the Levant. It narrates the story of the crystallization of a type of sub-imperial power, illustrated by the canonical discourses associated with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

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This volume discusses contemporary Buddhist responses to religious diversity from Theravadin and Tibetan Buddhist perspectives. Buddhist attitudes toward other religious traditions (and its own) are unquestionably diverse, and have undergone changes throughout historical eras and geographic spaces, as Buddhists, and traditions Buddhists have encountered, continue to change (after all, all conditioned things are impermanent). The present time is a particularly dynamic moment to take stock of Buddhist attitudes toward religious others, as Buddhist identities are being renegotiated in unprecedented ways in our increasingly globalized age. Is it true that Buddhists are tolerant of other religions? To what extent are Buddhists tolerant? Is nirvana held to be attainable through Buddhism alone? If so, through which Buddhist tradition? This volume approaches these questions and others from perspectives representing Theravadin and Tibetan traditions of Buddhism. The chapters herein bring together a spectrum of views that are not often found side-by-side in a single volume or in a meaningful dialogue with each other, needless to mention with other religions. This volume seeks to remedy this situation, and break new ground to enable further dialogue, understanding, and constructive encounters across Buddhist traditions and between other religious traditions and Buddhists.

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The Middle Way was first taught explicitly by the Buddha. It is the first teaching offered by the Buddha in his first address, and the basis of his practical method in meditation, ethics, and wisdom. It is often mentioned in connection with Buddhist teachings, yet the full case for its importance has not yet been made. This book aims to make that case. The Middle Way can be understood from the Buddha's life as well as his teachings. His early life follows a symbolic quest through the extremes of the Palace and the Forest, followed by the discovery of the Middle Way. His similes, such as the raft, the lute-strings, the arrow, and the blind people with the elephant are not just allegories of Buddhist teachings, but relate closely to the universal human experience of balanced judgement. This book also has a critical case. Although it has transmitted the Middle Way, the Buddhist tradition has also often ignored or distorted it. The Middle Way is experiential, authentic and creative, and thus threatening to the power of a tradition that has instead emphasised the Buddha's authority as a source of abstract, absolute revelation. The Buddha's Middle Waya aims to differentiate the universal Middle Way from Buddhist tradition.

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For nearly thirty years, a scientific revolution has taken place in the religious studies departments of several North American and British universities--and the results are considerable, obliging us to envisage new ways of conceiving of this academic field. While the History of Religions tended to rest in the shade and guardianship of past authorities, this critical current has re-examined the discipline's a priori positions, its favourite arguments, its long prehistory within Euro/Christian culture, but also its numerous ethnocentric prejudices. The first part of the volume considers anew the origins and Christian history of the notion of religion. This starting point then allows us to identify dead ends and contradictions within the traditional History of Religions approach. The second part is dedicated to the synthetic presentation of the concepts, methods, and controversies, which distinguish this current. Following this are two related contributions devoted to two major case studies: "Colonialism and Cultural Imperialism" and "The Invention of Hinduism and Shintoism". Finally, in the third and last part of the book, this trend itself is critically examined. The author identifies some of the paradoxes, gaps, and aporias that this approach has already gathered during its short existence.

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For nearly thirty years, a scientific revolution has taken place in the religious studies departments of several North American and British universities--and the results are considerable, obliging us to envisage new ways of conceiving of this academic field. While the History of Religions tended to rest in the shade and guardianship of past authorities, this critical current has re-examined the discipline's a priori positions, its favourite arguments, its long prehistory within Euro/Christian culture, but also its numerous ethnocentric prejudices. The first part of the volume considers anew the origins and Christian history of the notion of religion. This starting point then allows us to identify dead ends and contradictions within the traditional History of Religions approach. The second part is dedicated to the synthetic presentation of the concepts, methods, and controversies, which distinguish this current. Following this are two related contributions devoted to two major case studies: "Colonialism and Cultural Imperialism" and "The Invention of Hinduism and Shintoism". Finally, in the third and last part of the book, this trend itself is critically examined. The author identifies some of the paradoxes, gaps, and aporias that this approach has already gathered during its short existence.

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It is often assumed that a revelation must be new and innovative, and indeed, that the point of a new sacred text must be to revitalize the heritage. Yet in the Tibetan Nyingma Treasure Revelatory tradition, the ongoing vitality of textual production often has more to do with the fresh blessings, rather than altogether novel content. This book for the first time analyses precise continuities and changes in comparing the new and the old, considering examples of the creation and development of tantric revelations, including further re-workings in subsequent generations. In doing so, the focus enlarges to encompass materials from the broader religious heritage, as well as from specific lineages of related visionary lamas. By identifying such exact linkages and departures, it is possible to answer questions both of how and why developments may occur, not limiting the purview merely to the individual stories of the virtuoso lamas producing the books, but looking also to the tantric communities they are part of. The case studies in the book stem from the prolific writings of the famous 20th century scholar-lama, Dudjom Jigdral Yeshe Dorje Rinpoche, who contributed to numerous revelatory traditions of the past, as well as producing his own revelations. They concern a single tantric deity, Vajrakilaya, the most popular Nyingma deity, whose tantras and ritual practices stem from the earliest formulations of Tibetan tantric Buddhism, and who is closely connected with the culture heros and founding fathers of the Nyingmapa. This particular focus gives us the opportunity to discover patterns in the creation of new tantric texts which have significance beyond the specific examples.

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Constructing "Data" in Religious Studies provides a critical introduction to the ways in which the category "data" is understood, produced, and deployed in the discipline of religious studies. The volume is organized into four different sections, entitled "Subjects," "Objects," "Scholars," and "Institutions," with an epilogue by Russell McCutcheon and Aaron Hughes. The volume's aim is to reflect, first, on the problems, strategies, and political structures through which scholars identify (and therefore create) data, and second, on the institutions, extensions, and applications of that data. The first three sections are spearheaded by a key essay and followed by four responses, all of which consider how the politics of the academy determine the very nature of the things we purport to study. The fourth section considers what these concepts look like as they are applied and further institutionalized in college and university structures, and itself includes four essays on "teaching," "departments," "research," and "labor." Finally, the epilogue closes the volume with a consideration on the politics of scholarly collegiality, transforming the data-makers (scholars) into data themselves.

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Yoga in Britain reveals how yoga came to be an accepted, mainstream activity. In mid-twentieth century Britain, yoga transformed from an esoteric concept into a something that could be taught in to middle-class women in adult education classes. Much of the popularization of yoga in this context was seen in terms of being a source of potential public benefit in promoting physical health and wellbeing. Yoga was also widely acknowledged to offer an opportunity for spiritual exploration, but largely as a private, highly individual concern. Using extensive archival evidence and oral history interviews, the book stresses the importance of adult educational structures in how yoga was popularized in twentieth century Britain. It argues that this context is crucial in understanding the contemporary popularity of yoga globally.

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This book traces the trajectories of modern globalization since the late nineteenth century, and considers hegemonic cultural beliefs and practices during the various phases of the history of capitalism. It offers a way to study world popular music from the perspective of critical social theory. Moving chronologically, the book adopts the three phases in the history of capitalist hegemony since the nineteenth century-liberal, organized, and neoliberal capitalism-to consider world popular music in each of these cultural contexts. While capitalism is now everywhere, its history has been one borne out of racism and masculine hegemony. Early Europeanization and globalization have had a major impact upon western race/gender/sexuality/capitalist hegemony, while nascent technologies of capital have led to a renewed reification and exploitation of racialized, sexualized, and classed populations. This book offers a critique of the relationship between emergent capitalist formations and culture over the past hundred years. It explores the way that world popular music mediates economic, cultural, and ideological conditions, through which capitalism has been created in multiple and heterogeneous ways, understanding world popular music as the production of meaning through language and representation. The various dimensions considered in the book are the work of critical social science-a critique of capitalism's impact upon popular music in historical and world perspective. This book provides a powerful contemporary framework for contemporary popular music studies with a distinctive global and interdisciplinary awareness, covering empirical research from across the world in addition to well-established and newer theory from the music disciplines, social sciences, and humanities. It offers fresh conceptualizations about world popular music seen within the context of globalization, capitalism, and identity.

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Today, conversion is a contested religious, political, and personal phenomenon, and that was also the case in the ancient world. Using several primary sources (Jewish and Christian) and case studies, this volume discusses what this change could have meant for various individuals or groups of people in the ancient world and argues that conversion can best be understood through an intersectional perspective, an approach that includes gender, class, ethnicity, and age, as well as political and economic elements in its analysis of conversion. The volume also acknowledges that a discussion of conversion benefits from taking into account conversion's history of reception. Case studies from the reception history as well as contemporary examples of contested conversions (for example, from Christianity to Islam or vice versa) are also brought to the table. In sum, the book addresses the complexity of conversion, using a range of cases, texts and theories, and initiates a dialogue between ancient sources and present concepts or practices. Close readings of ancient texts play a central role in the project. Yet, the book also considers how sacred texts and their receptions have influenced the way we generally think about conversation as religious change.

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The Northern Soul scene is a dance-based music culture that originated in the English North and Midlands in the early 1970s, it still thrives today with a mix of fifty-year olds and new converts, and its celebration of 1960s Soul has an international following. This innovative and distinctive book brings together original commissioned essays and pivotal scholarly articles that have defined the field so far, interspersed with dossiers of published journalistic articles and photographs, and interviews with, for instance, producers and directors of Northern Soul-themed films. This publication represents a subject-defining book on the history and contemporary nature of the scene, and the first anthology of work in the field, which will provide a forum for vibrant dialogue and debate for a readership of lecturers and researchers, students and general readers interested in creative analyses and interpretations of the scene, past and present. The book links academic research, photography, film production and journalism in the documentation and analysis of historic and current music scenes. Representations of the scene from different media and different historical locations are juxtaposed to construct a rich and diverse statement about the music, people, places and practices that constitute the Northern Soul scene in the UK.

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Surviving The Induction Years of Language Teaching is unique to the language teaching profession because it outlines the detailed experiences of one ESL teacher during his first year and then during his third year to see what challenges he encountered during these important novice years. It is important for teacher educators, teachers and administrators to understand what novice teachers experience so that they can better be supported to become teachers for many more years to come. The results of this analysis will lead to the development of a comprehensive framework for the professional development of novice teachers through reflective practice that is grounded in the classroom realities of real teaching contexts so that they can develop beyond their novice years and become expert ESL teachers. In addition, the suggestions presented in this book can be operationalized as standards for future ESL/EFL teacher education and development programs worldwide.

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This volume presents a cultural history of Alex Haley’s Roots, examining the strategy and tactics Haley employed in developing a family origin story into an acclaimed national history. More than an investigation into Alex Haley’s legacy, Identifying Roots unearths the politics of beginnings and belongings. While we all come from somewhere, this book examines the terms on which our roots can work as a tradition to embrace rather than a past to leave behind. And it investigates why some of the texts we read also seem to read us back. Identifying Roots invites readers to reimagine the way we tell stories. A provocative study that draws upon Black studies, the history of religions, and anthropology, the book underscores the social drama and dynamics that define our scriptures. Nimbly moving between the stories of Alex Haley, his characters, and the world that received them, Newton reminds us that our roots are stories of consequence.

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Comparison is held to be one of the central methods of the academic study of religion. While many ostensibly engage in the comparative act, often overlooked is what it actually means to do this. What is comparison? Why engage in it and for what purposes? Can there be such a thing as a valid or invalid comparison? Can comparison itself be compared to anything? This book starts with the premise that while there are good comparisons and bad comparisons, what is common to both is the sheer artificiality of the enterprise and develops an analytical framework for using the method in the context of religious studies. After briefly tracing the history and genealogy of the category, Hughes draws on his own extensive work in Judaism and Islam to argue that comparison can be a useful method, but only under strictly controlled conditions.

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This volume explores economy and settlement of the early post-glacial pioneers of Northern Europe. The articles present overviews and case studies from the Early and Middle Mesolithic of Northern Scandinavia in their wider northern European setting. Given the large geographical and climatic variation - ranging from the temperate over the subarctic to the arctic zones - and rapid and large-scale, early post-glacial changes in topography and ecology across the area, a regional approach is necessary. Special emphasis is placed on how the early pioneer hunter-fisher-gatherers "mapped onto the landscape" - organized their economy and settlement - in order to provide for a broader and deeper understanding of the "big issues" such as why, from where, and how they came into different parts of Northern Scandinavia and in particular how the maritime component of the economy and settlement emerged. Another issue of particular, contemporary human interest is addressed through studies of how the early pioneers coped with rapid and large-scale climatic changes and their impact on living conditions. In addition new methodologies of particular relevance are presented. Based on new analyses and field-work this book brings fresh perspectives and insights to all these important aspects of our early post-glacial past.

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This volume aims to create--in Walter Benjamin's terms--dialectical images from early Christian texts and the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It blasts the past and the present into one another, creating new constellations of thought, ones connected with tensions and mediated by theory (mediation being what Theodor Adorno adds to Benjamin's concept of the dialectical image). Our ancient images derive from the Gospels, the Apostle Paul, Revelation, Irenaeus, Origen, and Augustine. Our modern images and theories derive from Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou, and Judith Butler. Together these images and theories challenge the way we think about gentrification, progress, early Christianity, revolutionary movements, history, the body of Christ, canonicity, language, gender, and bodies, both human and non-human. Eleven international scholars contribute to this volume. These scholars are experts in the fields of Biblical Studies, Early Christian Studies, Philosophy, and Critical Theory.

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